An interest in LSD.
I first developed an interest in trying LSD, I think, when reading the James Gleick biography of physicist Richard Feynman. While Feynman’s biography mentioned that everyone around him was trying LSD (when it was legal), Feynman mentioned that he would never try it, because the risk to his brain, which was what his entire career had been based upon, was too great. However, Gleick mentioned that Feynman had actually tried it, but kept it secret once LSD was banned, thinking that his employer, CalTech, might frown upon it. Then, I read the Steve Jobs biography, where it was mentioned. An article on Carey Grant trying it made its way onto my reading list. Tim Ferriss, and Sam Harris, mentioned in separate blog posts trying it for brain power, and spiritual experimentation, respectively, and, when I saw that the writer of the book that became the film “Limitless”, with Bradley Cooper, had based his book, and his fictional pill, NZT, on the book “Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream”, by Jay Stevens, I made the decision to try it if possible.

I turned 46 late last year, and I had never ever tried drugs. I hadn’t even tried alcohol until my 21st birthday, but always had a fear of any drugs. When I started dating a 31-year-old, Fleur, who was a three-times-a-day pot smoker, I tried marijuana for the first time (smoking and edibles). Fleur mentioned that she could get me anything that I wanted to try. So I told her I’d love to try LSD.

Then we broke up. Or she broke up with me, because of our fights about money. And she went back to the rich older generous boyfriend (who is married). So it was strange when she contacted me again to let me know that she had what I had expressed an interest in, that she had four paper tabs, and wanted to know when I had 8-12 hours to book a trip.

Unfortunately, as a single dad, I had my kid that weekend, so we scheduled the next weekend, with a trip sitter that she knew for safety sake. She also told me that a guy she knew, and had hooked up with, was very jealous that she and I were going to experiment with LSD, so this would be special.

Unfortunately, during my kid weekend, she had an “oops”, when the guy she used to hook up with came over with the movie “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, and they did the drug and did the deed. I decided to search the darknet markets for what I could as far as an alternate source. Unfortunately, that is right when the Evolution/Bitcoin debacle happened, which scared me.

So I went back to Fleur. She found out that her supplier ran out, so she found another one. While on her way to pick up the LSD, he was raided and arrested by the police, and she freaked out and went home. She spoke to a person who spoke to a person who was very knowledgeable about experimentation with LSD, who got her a source.

I mentioned that I had to be at CalTech on business at 2pm, so she said we would start early. (Early to me meaning maybe 6am). She was running late by 10am, and finally arrived around 1040am. She told me the story about her trip, which I think we finally dosed at 11am. She pulled open a baggie, which had a strip of a pre-marked and measured gel or gummy substance.

“Are you sure this is LSD?” I had never heard of dosage this way, only via liquid, paper tabs, sugar cubes, or via dropper onto gummy bears, etc. She said yes, that her experimenting source said it was good. I have no idea the dosage, honestly. But we each had one measure of the gel, which dissolved quickly under the tongue, and had no bad taste.

The Comeup.
I put on some music while we waited for the drug to take effect. She mentioned that the last time she tried it, with the paper tabs, that she walked during the come up. But she said “I’m not sure that was even LSD - that might have had cocaine in it.”

“I need to smoke a bowl”, Fleur said, and she smoked some pot.

At some point, leaning against my sink, I noticed that my sink looked FILTHY. And I thought I had recently cleaned it. It was as though I was seeing 20 extra shades of grey in the stainless steel that I had never noticed before. Wow.

“Let’s get out of here”, I said, and we went for a walk. I saw the yellow and blue shading in the leaves of the trees while we were walking, as never before. As mentioned, I’m 46, and I have gained weight, am out of shape, and walking, it felt like my heart rate was going through the roof, I was heating up, and I had a slight trouble breathing. I mentioned that to Fleur.

Fleur said, “I don’t want to have to call the ambulance on you. I’ve done that for three friends already.”

Taking a spill.
Suddenly, playing a joke on her sounded like a good idea. So I went face down on the grass, and didn’t move. And predictably, she freaked out. Laughing, I got up.

“Your face is bleeding”, Fleur said. I reached up and felt a point where I had hit a root and had a blood spot on the middle of my forehead. “Let’s keep walking, so that no one stops and asks if you are okay”.

On we went, to a sculpture garden, with a pyramid, rocks, flowing water, and lots of trees. There were patches of long flowing grass, and they seemed to be moving, and bulging, and I was not sure if it was the wind or the effects of the LSD. “Let’s sit under the trees, and watch the sparkling dew on the grass”. Unfortunately, an old man with a fanny pack heard me say that and took the only bench in front of the grass. So we went and sat elsewhere.

Fleur was suspicious. “I wonder if that old man suspects something”. “No”, I said, “we are just like two art students, admiring the sculpture garden”. I sat on the bench next to her. We ended up lying on a stone bench head to head, with our legs in opposite directions.

“Look at the wispy clouds — they look 3D!”, Fleur said. I couldn’t see that. I expected the sky to look like colors, or to see trails when I moved my hand, but I didn’t.

But I really wanted to walk barefoot in the grass between a large group of trees that I saw. The amazing different shades of green that I saw really fascinated me. So I entered a group of about 8 trees.

I speak with the trees.
Walking barefoot through the grass, I felt “drawn to” one of the trees. It was a eucalyptus. Right away, I noticed that the knots in its bark made a face. “Big deal”, I told myself, you can find a face in anything. But staring at its bark, it seemed to be moving, breathing, bulging, and alive. That fascinated me. I saw one patch of the bark in my vision stay still, while the rest of the tree seemed to move. I tried to focus on the face in the trees, but that didn’t seem to do anything for me. I tried to feel the trees and the grass breathe with me, but that didn’t seem to work. So I focused on the moving bark again.

Then I heard a voice inside my mind. “Look deeper”.

Then I heard a voice inside my mind. “Look deeper”.

I looked around, and looked up to the tree and to the new branches growing up on the higher branches. With my more sensitive vision to colors, I could clearly see how the tree became limbs, which became branches, became smaller branches, and became leaves. And from the older leaves, which were turning a darker green and brown, were younger leaves growing a bright green, at the end of the smaller branches. “Wow”, I said audibly.

Looking back at the tree, I realized that the “look deeper” comment made me realize that looking for eyes on trees was superficial and silly. I felt like that was staring at a big pair of breasts on a tree, without seeing what they were attached to. There was a lot to see, but I had to put aside trying to make the trees look human, or anthropomorphizing them.

I looked at another tree, which was an oak, and yet another tree, which was a birch. I saw how the oak, with its complex bark, was swirling, and how it faced another oak tree, which was smaller. And at the end of the grove was a large green tree with spikes (my mom always called those a “Monkey Puzzle”, but I am not sure what it is called). That tree had a grain that went sideways in rings, like fat rolls, around the tree, instead of the vertical grains of all the other trees. Every tree was different.

“Look deeper”, I heard again, and at that point, I got a little freaked out and returned to Fleur on the bench. “I’ve been communing with the trees”, I told her.

'Let me guess', she said. 'You’re a tree hugger now?”

“No”, I said, 'but I feel like, in a way, the trees were speaking to me.'

“Oh, I see now”, Fleur said. “You are the Lorax. You speak for the trees.”

This comment caused a giggling fit between the two of us for a long time.

“No. But I did spend a long time with that Eucalyptus. That tree is Australian, so it is not from here. But chances are in was brought here to this county between 1865 and 1880, when there was a huge investment of Eucalyptus trees and their rapid growth for farming purposes as a wind break.” I was trying to impress her with my knowledge of local flora.

“So, that tree is lonely, because it’s so far from home”, she said. “Maybe”, I said. '“Come on, let me introduce you,”, I told Fleur.

So I pointed out what I had seen, about the grain of the tree, and about how different they all were. I pointed out the spiked tree, and how sharp the spikes were, and how different that grain was. “you know, they make military night vision goggles green, because the human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other color.” While she spent the time pricking her fingers on the spikes, I returned to the Eucalyptus.

“You’re wrong”, I heard a voice say inside my head. “I’m not lonely, and I’m not far from home. And I’m definitely not different from the others.”

'Of course you are”, I thought. 'You’re different, and I can tell by looking at you.'

“I told you to look deeper”, the tree said in my mind. ' We are all here, roots in the SAME soil, inspiring and expiring the same atmosphere, and with the same sun shining on us. We are all drawing the same energy and nutrients. Look deeper.'

That made me gasp. The metaphor for all of us on Earth, all limited by what we do with the same resources - the air, the sun, the wind, the water, the minerals in the land”, was super obvious to me. And I felt stupid for thinking how different everything was. I was part of the trees, and of the Earth also. We all start with the same resources.

Fleur didn’t like the way that the knots in the spiked tree was looking at her, and she said that she wanted to jump, and run. But instead she went and sat down again. When she did, I went over and hugged the Eucalyptus. I was, indeed, a tree hugger.

The fanny pack man left the throne area, and so I went up there. I noticed that the dew drops, which had made these beautiful hexagon colors when I walked by there previously, had all dried up. I frowned. I walked around and noticed a granite round table and chairs - like a picnic table. The granite was alive, moving, like it was a pool of water. All the individual dark grains in the granite seemed to be dancing and boiling. That amazed me.

Everything has a grain.
Suddenly, I recalled being 12 again. I had problems with my parents, and was sent to live on a 500 acre ranch in rural Oregon, back then, and I was remembering being with a family that didn’t know me that well. I hung out with a 20 year old, named Allan, who was into cars and restored and painted rare cars to sell. I used to help him sand cars and paint them, and he told me the importance of following the contours of the car’s lines. “Everything has a grain”, he would say. “Follow the grain”.

Petting Allan’s german shepherd back then, he saw me petting the dog backwards to its fur. “I told you to follow the grain”, he said. Later on, when I got a summer job on a lumberjack crew in Oregon, and then would follow them to the sawmill, I learned all about observing the sometimes twisted grains of the trees we cut down and then would saw into lumber. Observing the grains of the tree, and predicting how the tension would release as you cut into the tree and tried to make the tree fall a certain way, was very important.

The next summer, I helped a butcher shop with a field truck slaughter a few farm animals, including three cows, a pig, a goat, several lambs, and a bison. Again, and again, the butcher trying to teach me a few things had said while cutting near the bones, “follow the grain of the muscle”.

I had totally forgot about that, and all that came back to me in a flurry of memories, all connected. and very vivid.

While Fleur sat on the bench, I decided to jump up on a granite rock, which was rough in texture. I saw what looked like a security guard approaching, and decided to go over to Fleur again. Doing so required that I jump off the rock, and looking down, it looked like the texture of the rock was like spikes, and the ground seemed around a mile away. Afraid that I was going to break an ankle, I jumped anyway, and landed safely. I was amazed at how, even though I felt like I was tripping balls, I had an excellent sense of balance, able to sit and stand, run, jump, and walk, without problem.

I could feel, since it was now noon, how hot the ground was, and how burning hot the sun was.

I walked over and could see that the security guard was actually a cleaning lady. I found myself telling Fleur that I could see the granite in it’s igneous state, moving like lava, when she interrupted me.

--“We are going to get the police called on us, or kicked out”, Fleur said.

“I don’t think so”, I said. “For all anyone knows, we are just two art students exploring art and exploring the sculptures here.”

“I don’t want to stay here. Let’s go”, she said. So go we did. On the way out I stared at the trees, and smiled. “Look deeper”, I heard again.

Suddenly, I realized that I was still being superficial. I didn’t have to spit out facts and scientific knowledge just to say something smart. It hit me that granite wasn’t even an igneous rock. I was making connections that weren’t there instead of learning something deeper. I started to cry.

The Carnival at the Performing Arts Center.
Crossing the street, the plan was to walk through a modern art sculpture garden and then through the big mall nearby. But when we crossed the street, the flags, sculptures, and signs outside the performing art center looked exactly like a very very colorful carnival to me.

“Let’s check out the carnival”, I said. I could see an interesting round sign that was a mauve color, or a faded red, that was a color I had never seen before.

“Let me guess, you want to get some cotton candy, and a balloon”? We laughed again.

We stood in front of the Performing Arts Center as senior citizens flied past us and around us for the afternoon matinee of whatever play was showing. We were looking at the sky and the colorful yellow and blue sculptures and getting some very very judgmental stares. One Japanese woman in her late 60s turned her head as she passed by and gave me a long stare, and I stared back. As I stared back at her, her face melted into a cartoonish Peter Max painting.

I saw a security guard who definitely was a security guard walking straight to us. “We had better go”, I told Fleur.

While we were walking, I kept looking over my shoulder and saw the security guard following us. She followed us to the property limit, and then we crossed the street and she turned around and went back to the performing arts center.

Leaving the property, I noticed a row of different trees - aspen trees. They had new sprouts and branches growing mid-trunk from the tree. “It’s a metaphor for layers of growth”, I told Fleur. And I remembered how there is somewhere, an aspen grove (Pando) that is supposed to be all connected as one organism and shares the same root system. I also noticed the building construction - you could see the texture and grains of the rolled stainless steel and the red sandstone used in the buildings very clearly - every detail.

My heart was racing again, and I felt like I was overheating. And I realized how red my eyes were from crying.

Seeing my True Self in a Sports Bar
We stopped into a local sports bar to hydrate and cool down. I felt like all eyes were on us. I sat at the bar while Fleur went into the bathroom. No one served us, so I moved to a corner table facing the window. Still nobody served us, and I began to get paranoid.

“How long has Fleur been in the bathroom?”, I wondered. It seemed like forever. Finally a waitress came over and asked what I wanted to order. “There is someone else coming”, I said. But I’ll have a diet coke and a water. I felt like I was sweating and red and overheating.

She paused and looked at me at what looked like forever. “Diet Pepsi okay?”, she finally said. “Yes”, I replied. Where was Fleur?

She was taking way too long. Maybe I needed to check on her. I was getting somewhat paranoid. Everyone was ignoring us rather than staring at us. I felt like I was overheating. I left my keys on the table and went to the restroom.

I paused in front of the Women’s restroom and couldn’t bring myself to open the door and call Fleur’s name. Act normal.

So I went into the Men’s room and put cold water on my face. I kept patting off the cold water until I felt like I was no longer overheating. I gave myself a long look in the mirror.

My eyes weren’t dilated like I had thought they were. But my hair looked so grey and wiry. I could see so many colors of grey, including in my hair, and on my face. My face looked so wrinkly. And my eyes were definitely red. Why did I think I looked so good for my age? I don’t. I thought I had no grey in my hair, but here it is - I can see it.

Everything has a grain, I thought. Especially my face. I am so old. I looked at my posture, hunched over, and my belly, extended from fat. No wonder I’ve been having so much problems with getting dates lately. I look horrible.

I went back to the table. Fleur was still not there, but my diet pepsi and water were there. I downed it quickly. Fleur showed up and I told her I was worried about her. “I’m fine, but I want to smoke”, she said. The waitress returned and took my Diet Pepsi, which was empty, away.

She had a water and an ice cream sundae and laughed at nothing. I stared out the window, which had a screen on it, and the screen was FILTHY. “It’s a metaphor”, I told Fleur.

“Another one?”, she said, 'There’s a lot of metaphors today', she said. “Well, everything does have a grain”, I told her. But this screen is a filter. And our filters get clogged up with a lot of stuff - religion, education, stereotypes - and it keeps us from seeing the world clearly, like us trying to see out of this window.

“Why did the waitress take away my drink? Are we about to be kicked out?' I was getting to be the paranoid one in here. I had kicked off my shoes and started to wonder if that was against the rule here.

“mmm,”, she said. “Try this brownie ice cream sundae”. I did, and it tasted super sweet and chemically to me. So did the Diet Pepsi, for that matter. Much more than I’ve ever noticed before.

We weren’t going to have any alcohol, and I didn’t feel hungry, at all, and I was cooling off. So I put my credit card on the table. The waitress refilled the water and Diet Pepsi again and didn’t take the card. I was getting paranoid about that. Maybe it was the fact that I didn’t have shoes. I’m sure that they have a sign that they can refuse service for no shoes or no shirt.

I looked at the couple next to us at another table, sure they were staring. They weren’t, but the woman stared at me due to my staring at them. I noticed how grey her skin color was. She must be a smoker. While she faced me and looked at me, her face seemed to melt, almost, and she looked like the cartoon Droopy Dog character.

“Your eyes are yellow. Like really yellow. You should get that checked out with a doctor”, Fleur said to me.

Leaving the high barstools, getting my shoes on, and calculating tip and leaving seemed to be a challenge. Looking down at my feet, it looked like they were dangling a mile away. But we walked back and to my pool. The pool was too crowded on this sunny day to be a place to be. I dipped my toe into the jacuzzi, and saw dust enter the water. The fluorescent bathing suits, beach balls, and the amazing shading of the trees made me feel like everything was brighter.

I decided that I wanted to record my thoughts, and regretted not bringing a journal. I tried to use the voice memo feature on my phone, but kept forgetting to press the button before and after speaking. I was starting each voice memo with “hippie thoughts”, and then my thought, but then suddenly obsessed on whether or not I should be calling them “trippy thoughts”, instead.

“Hippie thoughts: We are all under the same tent.
Hippie thoughts: Whenever a bee stings someone else, it ends up harming themselves more.
Hippie thoughts: We need to notice the details more - the subtle shading, and not just the obvious -of our lives more.
Hippie thoughts: It really doesn’t matter whether you call them hippie thoughts, or trippy thoughts. That’s not a thing.'

Divergence
Once we got home, I drank more water, and noticed that I had definitely been sunburned. Fleur went to work smoking another bowl of weed right away, and she started watching kaleidoscope videos on youtube on my laptop.

I wanted to listen to music, and lie down, so I put asked Fleur if she was okay with me not watching her and being alone, and put on a sleep mask/blindfold, headphones, and played pandora and listened to music.

The moment I closed my eyes, I saw patterns very clearly. On the perimeter of my vision, I saw lightning flashes - white and active. In the center, I saw a scanning electron black and white image of a grasshopper extremely close up. And I saw that antennas on the grasshopper, which looked like hairs, had their own hairs/antennas, which in turn had their own hairs. There were patterns all the way down. The grasshopper image split into two, and then four, and then turned into this beautiful geometric pattern, with a dark sparkling charcoal liquid mercury forming triangles and other geometric shapes, spilling and flowing over a deep green pattern.

I thought back to that tree, and looking up at the new bright green growth backlit by the sun. The tree had a branch which led to a leaf, which supported a newer leaf. My son, who just turned 10, was a green growing new leaf. And it was the job, naturally, of the larger connected leafs to support the growth of the new leafs.

That growth can happen naturally, if there is a structure. But if the branch, or leaf, is broken at a right angle, it won’t grow right. It may even reach tendrils to get nutrients and growth, to another tree, branch, or roots underground.

I thought about my father. About how he hit me once, and I felt compassion for him. He always said he didn’t have the best parents. His grain grew as it did, and he was what he was. And I thought again about Allan, in Oregon, taking on, in a way, the surrogate father role and teaching me about cars, and life, and not being judgmental, just guiding me on the right grains to follow when sanding a car along it’s lines.

And of course, I thought about my son. It suddenly became super important for me to make sure that I offered guidance to my son and that he grew with my assistance straight and narrow without veering off into something damaging. I could feel a duty as elders to guide my young son and show him the dangers and the ways to grow up safe and happy. I wanted to expose my son to good things, and feed the good things in him right. And to show him that all the sex and shit talking of society is not all there is. All the marketing that he has been, and will be exposed to, is not all there is.

I started to cry. Fairly uncontrollably. I cried for the damaged relationship with my Dad, who was in a great marriage with my mom, and was a great provider, and so smart, and a world traveler, but worked too hard and was never around. And I cried for my son, who I worry about and just want to grow up self actualized and happy and independent. Here I was noticing every detail of the moment, and I was not taking in every moment of my son as he goes through his childhood.

“Ah, I know what this is. This is my brain pattern, doing…” And then I was stuck.

“Ah, I know what this is. This is my brain pattern, doing…” And then I was stuck.

I had this overwhelming feeling that I didn’t really know what was going on. It was humbling. I always wanted to insert a scientific answer into something, but this was way out of my normal experience.

I found myself saying over and over again to myself:

I don’t know shit.
I don’t know shit.
I don’t know shit.

Musical Adventures.
Then the Pandora station changed to a Rihanna song. “What the fuck? Rihanna?” I thought for sure I had selected a chill out / lounge music station before the trip even started. This song shouldn’t be playing.

But I went with it. The patterns and lights in my brain, and the “lightning” electricity, made colorful disco patterns. I could hear every detail of the music - when Rihanna took a breath to sing the next line of verse, I could hear the air passing through her larynx. “Even air has a grain”, I thought. 'I’ll bet if she had a bump, or a polyp, in her breathing tract, you could hear that in the music as the air passed over it”.

The next song was some singer from Iceland, singing in Icelandic. I couldn’t tell what the words were at first, but I concentrated on the emotions. My brain thought I was hearing the words, but that was not possible.

I thought about how birds have a certain number of songs used to communicate, and how humans have the same patterns. You think about two women laughing and making a joke, and you know what they are communicating, as far as emotion, even without the specific joke details. Or a couple about to make love, and the woman, or the man says something like “mmm yes”, or “mmm da”, or “mmm oui”, or “mmm, si”, and you know what that conveys. Or when a younger guy says “dude” in a certain tone of voice, or a young woman says “uggh whatever” in a certain tone of voice, the “song” and the context lets you figure out anything. The details almost aren’t important.

All language is this way - it’s just one flow of grain to try to express concepts, thoughts, and especially emotions. Like the songbirds we express emotions. Language gets in the way of that sometimes.

Next song is an old woman singing in Spanish to a slow Tango song. I can hear her age just from the voice, and I can especially pick up on her Argentinian accent, since I am very familiar with Latin American Spanish and Castilian Spanish. I can especially tell she is a smoker.

My Trip Partner Fights with Her Partner.
I’m getting restless. I can hear Fleur on the telephone fighting with someone, after she has been in the bathroom a long time. The fighting is bugging me.

“I’m checking on you”, I tell her. She has smoked several bowls of marijuana.
“yeah, my boyfriend is really freaking out. He thinks that I’m over here doing drugs with you and you and I are having sex. I told him we are not fucking. I feel like this is where our trips are definitely diverging”.

Suddenly, I feel compassionate towards Fleur. I was worried about having a bad trip with her, since she likes to fight with me, and she can be condescending, and insulting, and we had a dating relationship. But I just saw her as she was- dealing with a certain amount of anxiety, trying to feed it with marijuana, and dealing with financial issues.

Exploring the Dimensions that Really Matter.
I really want to draw, and I draw a detailed pen and ink version of the tree branches and color shades that have stuck in my mind. And then I draw a version of the cartoon senior citizen that turned into a Peter Max painting at the performing art center.

I went back into the room on my bed and put my blindfold and earphones on again. I started to see long string patterns of hexagons, pentagons, and squares, stretching diagonally in my vision. All of the repeating patterns I had observed in nature made me realize that things repeat over and over again. I thought about how much Fleur looked like my first girlfriend, over 20 years ago, and realized that there were only so many ways to make hands, arms, a face.

“Are there other dimensions?”, I wondered, while looking at squares stretched out in my eyes closed vision. “Maybe”, the answer said. 'But why does it matter? You are here, in this dimension. Time is also a dimension, and all you have is the here and now.' And a bright pinpoint light centered itself in between the long string of squares. And I realized that we are only here a short time, and I have already wasted half of my life.

I thought about the lines - the tree grains - on my face again. And for too long, I have fed my body, and my tree bark, if you will, processed foods, alcohol, and sun exposure, including today. All I have is this moment. I will be 50 in another four years, but I need to learn then how to be good at being a 50 year old. For now, I need to learn how to be a good 46 year old. That means bonding and learning from those my age. I realized that I can learn from the best people at my age, and the best in people younger than me. And, certainly the best in those aged above me. Everyone wants to teach you something, and has something to share with you that will teach you.

Hippie thoughts: Don’t do except do. Be the best you, at your age, that you can.

Compassion for Those that Have Hurt Me.
Wow. I started to cry again. I thought about a woman that really hurt me 15 years ago, and how year after year, I wonder how I’ll ever get through that hurt, and amazed that it still hurts and I still think about it all the time. And it seemed pretty easy to forgive her and move on. She must be older now, and maybe wiser.

“What about my ex wife?” I thought about her. We had a nasty divorce and I hated much about her actions, from before and after I filed for divorce. But it seemed easy to see her as a young girl in her 20s, in love with me, and not knowing what to do with my business, and my crazy life, and wanting to be a good mother and wife. And I had much compassion for her.

Why am I crying so much? This is not fun. It’s probably cathartic, but definitely not fun.

Lessons learned about Money.
“But wait”, I thought. 'What about Money?' I was supposed to think and meditate on my business during this LSD trip, and figure out what I should be doing with my life, and what I could do to improve my cash flow and merge my passions and areas of skill and change my business to fit that somehow.

Money has a flow also, the thought came to me. It grows along certain grains, with certain patterns. Suddenly I realized something.

Money is just a way to exchange something for something else that a person paying is looking for.

That sounds obvious, I mean we all know money is a unit of exchange, but my focus was on “what the person paying is looking for”. Suddenly it hit me that many of my clients are looking for the same thing (a positive result from a difficult situation), but some are looking for other things - reassurance that they are a good person, education about the process, confirmation that they are not going to be ripped off, someone to take care of something for them, guidance through a difficult time, or in general, goods, or services — and that what they are really paying the money for is that feeling or guidance or getting what they had in mind they wanted.

I realized that with my business, I do so many things that get in the way of that simple exchange. People WANT to pay me money to take care of their difficult situation, but I make sure I only return phone calls twice a day, so that I don’t get overwhelmed all day, and then I require an in person appointment to size them up, and then a written contract, with much legalese, and then they must pay via cashier’s check or money order, or visa/mastercard/american express/discover, etc.

As you can tell by this report, I like to write, and I probably use many more words than needed. I used to write a custom drafted 30 page memorandum to each client letting them know the pros and cons of each choice we had to make while I was handling their matter, and the probability of success of each option, and my recommended strategy. And after spending hours on that, I used to find that most clients never read it, or just skipped to the last paragraph that said “conclusions”. Did they not see how many hours I spent analyzing their matter? Were they stupid? Were they not impressed by my education and vocabulary and great writing skills? No. All they wanted was my recommendation in the first place, and to know that I had gone over their situation and had a plan. And I put so many blocks in the way of them getting that - so that I can feel important, or because I think they need that, or for no reason at all. The flow of paying for something and getting what the person wants that they are paying for needs to have as few steps as possible to block that.

Aligning yourself to the flow of what the market really wants (what people really want in the aggregate) is even better.

I thought about a doctor who thought I was well connected and wanted to pay me a small amount to talk about his practice on Facebook and instagram. I accepted and then griped about it, and when I did what he asked, he changed the terms and asked me to delete instagram and send a message on twitter instead. (this all happened the night before the LSD trip). I was angry that he changed the terms, which made extra work for me while traveling, and was going to get revenge on him by putting something negative out there, and making a big deal about him being unethical, etc. Suddenly that all seemed petty. All he wanted was his business promoted, and to pay for it. And I accepted that, and so I should promote once I decided and promised to do so. So I did. And he was happy and paid double. Less stress for me, less blockage of the flow of money from what he wants to what he paid for.

I could hear Fleur fighting with her boyfriend again. “I am not fucking him!”, she said.
“No, all he is doing is crying and crying. I swear, he is just crying. Okay Bye”.

The trip turns bad.
I very suddenly had, in my vision with my blindfold on, a vision of a horse head, completely skinned and bloody, all muscle and fat and skin hanging off of it, with eyes staring at me. That shocked me. Oh boy, I thought, here comes a bad trip. From there, a background all over my vision of bone fragments, and blood, and skin, and eyes and teeth were everywhere. I cringed. But I thought about, as I had recently been reminded, how I had worked with a butcher, and had lots of experience with dead animals. But these look human, I thought. I’m okay with this. And then it went away.

Going solo.
“I’m going to leave as soon as I smoke this bowl. I’m fine to drive. My boyfriend is really upset, and thinks that this is like going over to a guys house to do a line of coke and fucking him. I am never doing LSD again, that is for sure. This is my once in a life time experience. '

I started rambling on and on about my meditations about money. “Yeah, what is money, and why do we even need it?”, she said. I told her that we need to not get in the way of money flowing for what people want to pay it to accomplish.

“All I know is that my boyfriend is super rich. And he does all kinds of things. But he is really rich, so I can’t piss him off.” She exhaled and I saw the smoke coming out of her mouth, backlit by the window, turn into a rich rainbow of colors. Literally stripes of colors in the smoke. I told her that she was turning into Puff the Magic Dragon with her rainbow smoke, and she laughed.

She hugged me and I told her thank you. I expressed to her that this felt like 10 years of therapy in one afternoon. I told her she had given me a gift. “I know, she said”, “everything is a metaphor, and everything has a grain.'

She left. I looked at my granite kitchen countertops, and noticed that the visuals seemed to be gone. The grains in the granite didn’t seem to be as interesting any more.

Body sensations.
I laid down and cried again. I tried to meditate, and noticed that my back and neck were very stiff. My jaw had been clenching up throughout the afternoon. My eyes hurt. I started a body scan meditation and tried to relax, imagining my whole body calming down.

A voice in my head said “of course your jaw and eyes hurt. You have been crying for hours. And you have a knot, like the knots you saw in the trees, in the middle of your forehead.” I reached up and felt the dried blood from falling early in the trip. I had forgot about that. “When are you going to see that everything bad, you do to yourself?” Everything you do to nurture or harm any cell in the grains of your body is like that. It damages or repairs itself depending on how you feed the grains.
“I know”, I say.
“I know”.
And I feel very humbled and stupid.
I realize suddenly that I am holding onto things tightly and causing my own neck and back pain. And it’s a metaphor for what I need to let go of.

I vowed to myself to sign up for a Yoga class the next day. I feel that the grains in my muscles need to flow more. I realize that what others call “flow” or “energy” during LSD trip reports I am experiencing as a grain, like the wood grains I saw earlier. And I vow to call Big Brothers, and become a Big Brother to a little boy who needs support to grow up like a leaf big and strong, and not get nutrients from bad sources. And to only feed the grains of my skin with quality nutrients. And to wear more moisturizer and sunblock.

Hippie thoughts: Growing up in the universe means letting go of “you'.

Walking
Later that evening, after sundown, I decided to do something good for my body, and get some exercise and think. My mind felt clear, but I did feel a little ADD, in that thoughts were scattering through my brain at what felt like record speed. I walked and walked, and found myself smiling at every tree I saw on my walk. “I learned something from a tree today”, I thought. Amazing. I ended up walking over to a tree and giving it a big hug, smiling, and wished it well, and thanked it for being part of the Universe, and for teaching me something.

When I returned home I saw via my phone that I had walked 7 miles. And I didn’t feel it. Usually after 1-2 miles I get tired and feel it in my legs, and the soles of my feet. What a day. I readied myself for sleep.

Sleeping.
What a day, I thought, as I tried to get to sleep. But I could not sleep, try as I might. I kept going over the events of the day, and what I had learned, and felt sad for Fleur just smoking pot and arguing and not getting any value out of this. I definitely felt different and felt that I had examined a lot. Was my brain different? Was my brain damaged?

Yes, I can feel that my brain is different, but I can look back at all the patterns I was stuck in with the old brain, and see that it clearly was an improvement.

Finally, at 5am, I fell asleep, only to wake up at 6am for work. All day I felt extremely tired, almost hung over, but with a more clear energy and no headaches, like a hangover would give one. I skipped Yoga to sleep early that evening. The next day I felt clear, and noticed that I had lost 6 pounds. That made me smile.

Hippie Thoughts: It looks the same. It's the same grain.
Expressing itself
Familiar patterns
Again and again
Gives us a chance to learn
Gives us a chance to do it right
Or lets us do it wrong
--Again and again.

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Experience Reports are the writings and opinions of the individual authors who submit them.
Some of the activities described are dangerous and/or illegal and none are recommended by Erowid Center.